Re: GPL on rendered images
Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 10:06:45PM +0100, Ingo Ruhnke wrote:
>> So deleting the source makes it ok to distribute binary-only?
>
> That's not at all what I said.
>
> Since no one has cared enough about these 3d models -- to the point that
> they apparently do not exist any more -- it doesn't seem reasonable to
> claim that people prefer to work with these 3d models.
The case is different here, as with most games, the 3d models are
created by a artists who then sends the rendered images over to some
programmer/maintainer who integrates them into the game, the
programmer/maintainer almost never touches the original 3d models or
even the 2d images, since all that is needed for the game are the
rendered 2d images. Beside from that, the programmer/maintainer may
lack the tools and knowledge to make any use of the 3d models, thats
why in most cases there is little care taken to archive them. In
general artwork is very seldomly touched by other people than the
original creator and even by them seldomly if at all once it is good
enough to be used in a game, thats why seldomly care is taken to
archive the intermediate steps.
The artist itself will however without a doubt cared about the 3d
models, but since there weren't usefull to run the game, they weren't
included in the main source tree. Since in this case the game was
first planed to being developed commercially and the development team
as split-up long time ago the original files are now lost and all that
is left are the images and datafiles that are needed to run the game +
the actually C++ source code.
> Right now, you're just talking about different editor formats.
> ("layers" vs. "flat image" is roughly equivalent to the distinction
> between a word processor format and a text editor format -- the
> source is the source in both formats. 3d models vs. sprites, without
> a robust and standardized environment to do the rendering, is like
> the distinction between manual pages and source code.)
Am I understanding you correctly that since there currently isn't a
standard form of source for different kinds of media it is safe to
assume that the media itself is to be considered the source as long as
it provides a minimum form of editablity (ie. flat png is ok, even so
a multilayered might be more usefull for editing purpose)?
> I'm not saying that the cases you're talking about are never going
> to be significant, but right now they all seem fairly trivial.
Practically its indeed today not much of an issue, since artwork/media
in general is seldomly 'forked'. However I am pretty unsure on what I
have to actually distribute with my games source, if the game as a
whole is released under the GPL.
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